The Destroyer's Brother
by katriel1987
Summary: Are a billion families less important than the brother you have already lost?


Author's Note: This was written really, _really_ late at night (or should I say early in the morning?), which is my excuse for how weird and fragmented it is. It is definitely AU, and **it has character death**; don't say I didn't warn you.

No Wincest, ever!

* * *

_There are few Resistance fighters left now, and we grow fewer every day, a mere handful to stand against the Demon_'_s numerous and powerful army. They have spread death and destruction to every corner of the globe, and all that once was green and beautiful is acrid dust now. The world reeks of sulfur, and the rain stopped falling months ago. We have lost already; this we know, but still we fight because it is all we have left, to die with whatever shreds of honor are left us._

_The Demon_'_s Army has left no place untouched; no population has been spared from their massacres, and everywhere they go they are led by the Destroyer. He was human once, they say; even now there is no demon in him, nothing to exorcise, but we cannot bring ourselves to call him human any more. He does the Demon_'_s bidding. I think that is why we hate him so much, more than the Demon even—because he is not some supernatural being from the pit of hell, but a __**human,**__ a man, leading the war—the genocide—against his own kind._

_I have not seen him—do you think I would be alive now if I had?—but I have heard the stories, patchwork tales pieced together from the accounts of those few lucky enough to survive. The Destroyer has powers no other human has ever dreamed of possessing, powers greater even than those of the lesser demons. He can kill with a look or a thought. He is invulnerable to any form of attack._

_We hate him with a passion that will not die until the last of us lies dead on the bitter earth, but there is one that we hate even more: the Destroyer_'_s Brother. The prophecies say—and we all believe the prophecies; they have been right about everything else—that the Destroyer_'_s Brother was the only one who could have killed him before he became too powerful. But he could not bring himself to do it, and thus he chose his brother over the world, and in the end lost both, in addition to his own life. Out of love, the Destroyer_'_s Brother unleashed the greatest evil our world has ever known, and condemned to death everyone who fights against the Demon._

_I find myself sometimes wishing the Brother was still alive, that I could speak to him just once, and ask him why he did it. Are a billion families less important than the brother you have already lost? I would ask. Why did you sacrifice the world to save someone who couldn_'_t be saved?_

_Why didn_'_t you stop it when you had the chance?_

* * *

Sam Winchester bolted upright in bed, gasping for breath, his hair plastered to his sweat-soaked face. He scrubbed his hands over his eyes, hard enough to make stars burst in his sight, as if he could get rid of the images still burned into his mind in sickening Technicolor. _Blood and death—screams—the last survivor, falling broken onto parched ground—_

"Sammy?" Dean had heard Sam's rude awakening, and his voice was low with concern. He flipped on a lamp and stared at his brother with sleepy but worried hazel eyes. "Hey, man, are you okay?"

"Oh, God." Sam gave a slightly hysterical laugh, still rubbing at his eyes. "Oh, God."

"Hey, hey." Dean was out of bed now, and although his expression hadn't changed much, his brow was wrinkled slightly in concern. He gently raised Sam's face to get his brother to look at him. "Nightmare? Vision?"

"Vision...I think. It felt...it didn't feel like a nightmare." Sam looked at the ceiling beyond Dean's face; couldn't bring himself to look his brother in the eye. "God, Dean," he said softly. "It was...it was..." He stopped again, feeling like a broken record, knowing there was no way he could possibly express the fragmented horror he'd just seen.

"Yeah?" Dean prompted, in that soft voice he used when he was really concerned, that voice that could almost make Sam forget what a smart-ass he was most of the time.

Sam grabbed his brother by the shoulders, and finally looked straight into Dean's eyes, saw his brother almost flinch at the intensity of Sam's gaze. "Dean," he said, low and urgent, the words tumbling out now, "you have to _swear_ that you'll stop me if I turn evil. _Swear_ it."

"Sam—" Dean said wearily, that all-too-familiar low ache creeping back into his voice.

"No, Dean, listen to me. The vision—it was a _vision_, man, not a nightmare—it was...it showed me the future. I don't know how far off, but man, it was screwed up. The Demon was winning, Dean, he was destroying the whole world and I...I was serving him." _I was killing people for him, I was ripping children to pieces in front of their parents, and there was so much blood..._

"It won't happen, Sam. I won't let it." _Because I_'_m your big brother, and I kill all the monsters that could hurt you, even the ones inside._

"Dean, please." Sam's voice had a telltale tremor now, and _dammit_ he didn't want to cry but he had to get through to Dean on this. "If I...change...you have to promise that you'll kill me. Man, think about it—if there was anything of _me_ left, I wouldn't want to live that way. I wouldn't want to be a slave to the Demon." _I wouldn_'_t want to watch myself rip people apart with my mind._ "You have to swear it. Please."

Dean's eyes looked hollow and not-quite-alive and Sam wanted to cry more than ever, but after a long moment in which the fate of the world hung in the balance, Dean finally exhaled and said, "Okay. Okay. I swear, Sam. I do."

* * *

Dean's ribs ached and there was blood trickling into his eyes, but his hand, the hand pointing a pistol at his brother's chest, didn't waver. There was just enough light filtering into the abandoned warehouse that he could see the hollows where Sam's eyes should be, weren't any more. The eyes there now were still the right shade of brown, but they belonged to something else, and the worst part was that there was nothing to exorcise. 

Sam—the thing that Sam had become—gave a small, soft laugh that sounded like Sam's laugh would sound if you put it in the deep freeze. "Come on, Dean," he said, stepped forward slightly, hands out placatingly. "You aren't going to shoot your brother, are you? Your little Sammy? We both know you can't do it." He stepped forward, into the light enough that Dean could see his eyes, his big brown not-Sam's-eyes.

Dean's own words from months ago echoed back at him, bouncing back and forth off the inside of his skull. _I swear, Sam. I do._ He hadn't really believed that it would happen, not then, not when he still had his brother in front of him, all teary and girly and overflowing with compassion and concern.

_This isn_'_t Sam,_ he lied to himself, but when he looked at that face all he could see was his brother.

_First smile. First step into Dean_'_s arms. Learning to ride a bike. Following his big brother around like a puppy. Laughingtalkingreadingcryingscreamingfightingsaving..._

_Sam._

Sam took another step. He was almost close enough now to knock Dean's gun away, and they both knew it would be for the last time.

"Dean," Sam said, and his voice softened into that gentle, _let_'_s-be-reasonable_ tone that he always used to calm people down. "You can't kill your own brother."

Dean choked on the promise he'd made, choked on a million memories of tiny baby brother snuggled up soft and safe against him, of a little hand clutching his finger like a lifeline, of a _big_ hand clutching his shirt like a lifeline, of Sam, Sam, _Sam_ with his big brown eyes and his bigger heart. He choked and it came out like a sob and he pulled the trigger.

"I'm sorry, Sam," he said, and blinked away the blood and tears to kneel beside his dying brother.

And oh _God,_ the eyes that looked up at him were Sam's.

Not the thing's eyes, but Sam's, with all the heart behind them, all the compassion, and Dean dropped the gun and gathered up his lanky little brother into his arms like he had forever ago when Mom burned to ash on the ceiling overhead. Dean held his brother and said "Sammy, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—"

"Dean," Sam whispered. His bloody hand clutched a handful of Dean's shirt like it was a lifeline. "Dean...thank you." He sounded so young, and Dean wanted to say _It_'_ll be okay, Sammy, I_'_ll fix it, because that_'_s what I do, I'm your big brother, I'll make it all right, you hear me? I can fix this._

And then Sam _smiled,_ that happy dimpled Sam smile that Dean had given up on ever seeing again, and he whispered, "You...saved...me."

An instant later his eyes fixed and glazed, and the smile faded away, and Sam Winchester was dead.

Dean buried his face in his little brother's hair, and his voice broke when he said, "I promised I would."

* * *

They said it was a clear-cut murder/suicide—the older brother killed the younger, then shot himself. With the elder Winchester's criminal record, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that he would be capable of such an act. 

But the cops who found the two of them, lying in a pool of blood in the abandoned warehouse, were always haunted by the way that, even in death, Dean Winchester clung to his brother—as if nothing in this life or the next could ever make him let go.

* * *

_The war with the Demon raged long and fierce, and there were many casualties, but in the end he was defeated and sent back to hell where he belonged, and the world was made safe for us. In time the fields of the world were green again, and we raised our families with a new sense of gratitude for the lives we were granted._

_The prophecies said that the only reason we were able to triumph, to reclaim our world, was because someone had managed, before the war even began, to take out the man who would have been the Demon_'_s General. The prophecies were not specific about who this person was. I do not know his identity, but I do know this: we owe our future to him, to the man who was brave enough to stop evil before it became too strong._

**FINIS**


End file.
